He nodded, indicating back over his shoulder with his chin. “You up for a little stakeout?”
Um,yes.Anything to distract me from the mind-numbing itch that had settled under my skin after that phone call and completely ramped me up again.
“Aren’t I supposed to still be on leave?”
He waved his hand, pushing the door back further while he leaned his weight into it. “Captain’s off the next two days. She can yell at me then.”
I squinted, suddenly suspicious. “How did you know I was in here?”
He popped a brow. “Saw you sneak in. You think you could get past my desk without me noticing?”
Damn.
Although, that’s what I got for underestimating a senior officer.
“I was going to stop by and say hi, I swear.”
“Sure you were,” he drawled. “Come on, let’s go. I want one of those bagel sandwiches you were bragging about the last time I saw you.”
Pushing away from the desk, I stood and gathered my phone. Glancing down at the screen, one new text from Silas lingering on my screen, reading, ‘Six. Wednesday. Don’t be late.’
Oh, I wouldn’t dare dream of it.
CHAPTER 18
Silas
“You’re in a good mood today.”
I glanced up just in time to catch Violet’s tray being set down on the table across from me. She collapsed into her chair and shook out her hair from the tight bun she’d tied it up in early this morning when we’d both clocked in for the day.
Her long, dirty blonde hair was kinked in the middle from how taut her hair tie had been wrapped around the strands as they fell down her shoulders, the ends of it curling slightly, reaching right above her chest. Her cheeks were lightly flushed from the walk over here, the cafeteria’s heat still blasting high to combat against this past week’s temperature drop.
Normally, my staff avoided me during our breaks. So this was... an odd change of circumstances.
Violet sighed to herself as she grabbed the yogurt cup off her tray and shook it next to her head to mix the contents. Dark circles were a prominent mark under her eyes, as was the slight tired slack to her expression. Rarely, did I see her these dayswithout her facemask, cap, and safety glasses on—a permanent addition to both of our appearances as of late.
With the weather getting cold and the roads getting slicker than normal, accidents were coming in droves, leading my entire team to pull long shifts that had us dragging our feet by the end of it, none of us having the energy to strip out of our scrubs and coverings before clocking out and heading to our cars.
While the pursuit to save lives was noble, the exhaustion certainly wasn’t.
The ends of my plastic fork bent as I stabbed it into a few more pieces of the barely dressed pasta salad that had been slopped onto my tray by one of the kitchen cooks, along with a healthy portion of mushy string beans to accompany the rest of my meal. None of it was particularly appetizing, but calories were calories and I still had a good four hours left of this shift.
And twenty-eight hoursuntil Wednesday evening.
Not that I was absorbing myself keeping track ofthatspecific timeframe.
“How so?” I asked.
“You were smiling while you were on the phone earlier.”
Untrue, but I’d let her have it.
“I’m surprised it didn’t make you run out of the locker room screaming in horror.”
Her face flushed even more as she muttered a quiet, “Really?”
She struggled with peeling back the top of her yogurt, pieces of it coming off in small slivers that she flicked away quickly using her nails. A small pile of it collected on the napkin tucked under her paper plate by the time she got a good hold of a portion of it and ripped it clean.
